Reading to get spotlight on all-star coverage

Eastern League All-Star game will be produced by Service Electric with an eye on Reading and Berks County as well as players

July 10, 2012|Keith Groller

After a recent 12-games-in-11 days stretch at Coca-Cola Park, you'd think the Service Electric Cable crew that produces all of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs games would want a break from baseball.

Well, maybe some of the guys would like a break but they're not going to get it because Service Electric will be handling the production for all of the festivities surrounding the Eastern League All-Star Game at Reading's FirstEnergy Stadium over the next few nights.

Service Electric TV2 will televise the game on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and the broadcast will simulcast on Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia and various SportsNets up and down the East Coast.

TV2 will also have the "Home Run Derby" Tuesday night at 7.

"It's a natural for us to do this because we televise 30 Reading Phillies home games each year in addition to all of the IronPigs games," said Andy Himmelwright, TV2 general manager.

"We're going to have Steve Degler, who always does the play-by-play on our Reading games, in the booth with Ricky Bottalico doing the color. And then Rob Hackash, who was the PR guy for the Reading Phillies for 18 years, working the sidelines along with Doug Heater."

The Degler and Bottalico pairing brings together the only two IronPigs TV analysts the team has had in its five-year history.

"I've known Ricky since he came through Reading in 1993 and '94 and he was always one of my favorite guys on the team because he has a great personality," Degler said. "I am looking forward to working a game with him. It's going to be a lot of fun."

For Bottalico, the game offers a one-night respite from analyzing all that has gone wrong with the first half of the Phillies season on Comcast SportsNet.

For Degler, it gives him an opportunity to tell a regional TV audience about his beloved Berks County and Reading.

The 45-year-old Degler is a Kutztown University graduate who lives in Leesport. He grew up in Hamburg and spent 17 years as the Reading Phillies radio play-by-play before joining the IronPigs' broadcast team in 2009.

"It's very exciting for me to be able to do the game at FirstEnergy Stadium after spending 17 years with the Reading Phillies and never having the [all-star] game come through in my time," Degler said. "To get a chance to do this game on TV is a real thrill for me personally."

Degler is known for his impeccable research and he has done a lot of digging to come up with facts about some of the most prominent people to come out of Reading and Berks County, everybody from Taylor Swift to Lenny Moore to Donyell Marshall.

"A lot of people in our region know about the Reading Phillies and the IronPigs, but since we're going out to a larger audience this gives us a chance to let everybody know about the good things and the good people that Reading has produced over the years," Degler said. "With it being a Service Electric production, we have more control of where we can go during the broadcast."

And Himmelwright said there will be opportunities for Reading to get its due.

"Reading is Baseballtown, USA, and we have a couple of feature stories put together that we will work into the broadcast," Himmelwright said. "Commercial breaks are cut down and that allows for the 30 to 45-second clips to get airtime. We want to incorporate these short features to give people a feel of what Reading is like and what baseball has meant to the community."

Himmelwright said there will be plenty of interviews with managers and players during the game and ample chances to talk to other dignitaries.

"We didn't do the Triple-A all-star game at Coca-Cola Park two years because the MLB Network came in for that, although a lot of our crew was used," Himmelwright said. "So, we look at this opportunity as another feather in our cap."

And another busy night at the ballpark.

STELLAR ATTRACTION

A preview of the Stellar Construction "Catch A Rising Star" High School Basketball Showcase aired on Monday night on Service Electric and will be replayed at 5:30 Wednesday night.

SECTV will have championship coverage on Sunday with the girls final expected to tip off at 6 p.m. and the boys final at 7:30.

GOIN' TO KANSAS CITY

Baseball nostalgists probably still prefer Curt Gowdy, Joe Garagiola, Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Red Barber and others, but Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have now established themselves as the premier broadcast team in baseball history.

Tonight in Kansas City, they will work their 14th All-Star Game together for Fox, the most of any tandem in baseball history.

The next closest would be Gowdy and Tony Kubek doing seven Mid-Summer Classics for NBC from 1969 to 1975.

The All-Star broadcast is part of a big month for McCarver, 70, who is doing his 21st All-Star Game overall and will be receiving the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame later in July, saluting him for excellence in baseball broadcasting.

McCarver, who got his start in the booth working with the Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn on Phillies games, has also done 22 World Series broadcasts.

While the players are always the story in an All-Star Game, hopefully Kansas City's beautiful Kauffman Stadium, with all of its water fountains, will get its share of exposure as well.

KEITH'S CAN'T MISS … Finally, Showtime's "The Franchise: A Season with the Miami Marlins" premieres on Wednesday at 10 p.m. Like HBO's "Hard Knocks" NFL series, "The Franchise" offers rare access into the inner sanctum of pro sports. Look for Ozzie Guillen's controversial Castro comments to be spotlighted on the debut episode.